Kelefa Sanneh continues to dote on Chris Carraba in the Times, while Nerve is, predictably, interested in better things.

With the Replacements on in the background, plenty of not-so-smart things seem like wonderful ideas....Westerberg's sensitivity worked because, as much as he was a nice guy, he was also a bad boy: always drunk, falling down, unreliable. He wouldn't have been a good boyfriend. For starters, he would never remember your address ("Can't Hardly Wait"). But from afar, he would watch you walk through a city in winter ("Skyway") and would not be shy about mauling you on public transportation ("Kiss Me On The Bus").

Awww. Then there's this assessment:

And if Paul Westerberg hadn't been such a smoldering antihero, he still would have owned the '80s alternative world by default. The stars of the college rock scene were about as asexual a crowd as have ever made music. Billy Bragg and the Johns from They Might Be Giants? Hardly sex gods. Michael Stipe? Too shiny and happy. The Spin Doctors' Chris Barron? Too boorish-pothead. Pavement's Stephen Malkmus? Too damp-handshake pretentious. The Violent Femmes' Gordon Gano? Too hippie-neighbor sleazy. Guided By Voices' Robert Pollard? Too sleepy-sloppy. Jonathan Richman? Too neurotic (and word was he only went for suicidal strippers, anyway.) And if you don't retch imagining yourself in bed with Evan Dando, I don't want to know you.

Danielle Teplitsky, newly graduated from high school in Port Washington, N.Y., is the owner of about 150 [lip] glosses, she said. Last Sunday, she stopped at Macy's in Herald Square to slick on the new Pink Lollipop gloss from Lancôme.

"It needs to be shiny and it needs to taste good," said Ms. Teplitsky, 17, who likes to reapply gloss about every 20 minutes. "But most of all it needs to make my lips look pouty so my boyfriend will look at me."

Bath and Body Works is having a sale and I just went there and tried out about 10 different kinds of lotion and body spray, and now I'm greasy and reek so strongly of lemon-berry-butter-cream-sage-coconut-mango-basil-creme brulee-pear-mint that Betsy might make me shower before we can hang out and be writerly.

solstice is a nice word

-- The Mermaid Parade is on Saturday... but it is going to rain.

-- Ever try the Wikipedia "random article" function? It takes "learn something new everyday" to new levels of excellent-ness.

-- On the front page of the Observer, Sara Vilkomerson investigates the rising acceptance of male "flabbiness," a la Vince Vaughn and Jack Black, and some people wandering around Union Square.

Jill and Michael, a trendyish-looking couple strolling through the Greenmarket last Friday, seemed to embody, literally, the whole man-flab acceptance movement. “He’s my ideal,” said Jill. “He’s big and strong and has something to grab onto. It’s the whole being-protected thing—not that I think about that consciously. You want to be with someone who can protect you.”

“I like to work out. I like to eat. I work for a living, so I don’t have a lot of time to think about those things,” said Michael, who sported a beard and chin-length long hair in addition to a bit of a belly. “I’d rather eat and drink a beer than starve myself to look like some Chelsea boy.”

BUT!

Hollywood starlets, on the other hand, shouldn’t hold their breath for a reversal in body image. “It’s never going to stop for women,” said Ms. Stern.

-- And also at the Observer, a piece arguing that The Break Up was actually smart and perceptive about modern relationships and their superficiality.

In their final fight, Ms. Aniston cries so hard she can’t speak—and when she does, it’s not about how much she loved him. “I’ve gone above and beyond for you, for us, I’ve cooked, picked your shit up. I don’t feel like you appreciate any of it.” The absence of personalized affection suggests that modern relationships are often built on these fantasies of roles. But, even then, they’re obsolete fantasies when everyone knows they can move on and find someone who fits into their idea of a relationship just a little more cozily. What terribly banal disappointments! How familiar it sounds.

It still wasn't a great movie, but I kind of agree. Naomi was annoyed because it didn't leave her with the sugary magic of usual crap romantic comedy, but the lack of a fairy tale ending made me a lot happier than a "happy ending." This one left me wondering why movies don't focus on break ups more often... on the break up itself instead of characters' success at finding true love afterwards. The actual break up, with all the addendant drama and nastiness, is much more interesting than watching pretty people frolick through their cute n' temporary misunderstandings.

-- Maybe I was just really bored today, but I was totally entertained by New York magazine's feature on NYC etiquette. Especially the pieces by Amy Poehler and David Cross.

-- Tricia Romano reports in the Voice:

It's doubly hard to square the frequency of gay bashings with the public perception that it's OK to be gay. "Just because we have gay TV shows and all that, these things are just a fantasy," [DJ Honey] Dijon says. "It's like two different realities. It's like The Matrix. There's the virtual reality and what's happening in the real world. And what's happening on the street is a reflection of what our larger government and religious institutions are doing. What's the difference between what the government did in Iraq and what they did to Kevin Aviance? One is sanctioned and the other is not?"

-- Also, yesterday Salon had a article about straight girls who make out with each other. Omigod, this is breaking news!!!

These women say it's no big deal to kiss another woman -- especially if alcohol has loosened inhibitions all around. Same-sex behavior is more accepted, particularly on campus, and proving that you're "cool enough" to kiss another girl without worrying that your peers will question your sexuality is an example of how open our sexual culture has become. But is this staged bisexuality really a testament to a type of hypersexualized girl power -- or a statement on how far gals will go to please a generation of guys weaned on online porn? And what does it mean to girls who are actually coming out as queer to see straight girls playing bi for male pleasure?

Ummmm....Girl power!

Kitchen Sink has a new blog.

If you're procrastinating and looking for something to read, how bout spending some time on Fresh Yarn? I just found this essay by Elise Miller, about how she slept with the lead singer of Depeche Mode when she was 15, and it is hilarious and wonderful. I love stories about smart women's groupie pasts...

I think I have eye contact with David at least three times but I'm not one hundred percent sure. I do, however, feel a connection with him, as if it's me up there on stage, as if we're interchangeable, as if I'm the famous one everyone envies, which they would, if I could tell them I met the band and have a backstage pass. That, however, would be tacky. David swivels and gyrates to the point where I'm practically drooling with heavy duty lust. I lean in and shout to Karen, "I'll bet he's great in bed!" Karen nods and grins like, we are so fucking cool, which we are.

By the way - and this is old-ish news - Steve Almond resigned from his teaching post at Boston College because of their decision to have Condaleeza Rice speak at graduation. You can read the open letter he wrote about it that was published in the Boston Globe here. Choice quote:

I cannot, in good conscience, exhort my students to pursue truth and knowledge, then collect a paycheck from an institution that displays such flagrant disregard for both.

And then there's Steven Colbert speaking at Knox College's commencement. Reading the transcript makes the world seem like a better place, even if only for a moment.

A wall...across the entire southern border. That's the answer. That may not be enough -- maybe a moat in front of it, or a fire-pit. Maybe a flaming moat, filled with fire-proof crocodiles. And we should probably wall off the northern border as well. Keep those Canadians with their socialized medicine and their skunky beer out. And because immigrants can swim, we'll probably want to wall off the coasts as well. And while we're at it, we need to put up a dome, in case they have catapults. And we'll punch some holes in it so we can breathe. Breathe free. It's time for illegal immigrants to go -- right after they finish building those walls. Yes, yes, I agree with me.

Bitch magazine has a sweet new Web site! And their anthology comes out in August. Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay.

Caryn James spends more than 1,000 words picking at Jennifer Aniston in the Times. It's a seriously weird sort of tirade, kind of catty (and I hate that word) disguised as critical:

The relationship with Mr. Vaughn itself may have cost Ms. Aniston sympathy. In terms of her image it doesn't even matter if that relationship exists; the public believes it does. And while replacing Mr. Pitt with a new trophy guy would have seemed like vindication for the wounded princess, instead she has reached beneath her on the celebrity food chain. Mr. Vaughn seems smarter than his on-screen persona, and his mega-hit "Wedding Crashers" gave him some Hollywood clout. Still, nobody says, How did she get him? Just the opposite.

Speaking of Jennifer Aniston, I love what the av club has to say about The Break Up:

It's like watching the "we were on a break" episode of Friends stretched to feature length, and without the blessed relief of commercial breaks or the promise of Seinfeld around the corner.

Gwynne Watkins has a cool take on that movie Hard Candy, which looked like it could be good, if not for... well, some of what she points out.

Recently, a Dateline special got parents up in arms about the dangers of MySpace. The fear: those suggestive photos teenage girls may be noticed by, well, men looking for suggestive photos of teenage girls. Yet considering how badly they want to protect these girls, neither the MySpace protestors nor the producers of Dateline nor the makers of Hard Candy seem interested in what the teenage girls are thinking. And that seems to me to be a crucial oversight. Why is a fourteen-year-old girl's totally normal sexuality more frightening to look at than the stunted deviance of a pedophile?

The fancy new issue of Bookslut has interviews with Anthony Bourdain, Hal Niedzviecki, Hillary Carlip, Salvador Plascencia, Charles De Lint and George Saunders, and the column I wrote wherein I help prolong the debate about that stupid "best work of fiction in the last 25 years" list (Mike Schaub calls it "the New York Times' most regrettable decision since hiring Judy Miller").

I just finally filed my FAFSA and paid my electric bill! And my apartment is so clean and verging on organized that it's freaking me out how much I resemble a productive member of society. I got rid of 2 huge garbage bags of clothing this weekend (this after letting various people pick over the piles, the contents of which ranged from awesome-but-does-not-fit-and-maybe-never-did, to who-even-knows-what-this-is-and-what-kind-of-psycho-would-willingly-buy-it), plus another 2 huge bags full of papers I'm finally managing to part with. This included a not insignificant stack of administrative shit related to the Review - budget papers and office contracts etc. It felt pretty amazing to kick this stuff to the curb (or to the clothing donation bin). Not that I didn't manage to keep a lot of crap, too. But enough is gone now that it makes a real difference, both to the space of my apartment and the space of my brain.

I saw An Inconvenient Truth last night. It was really well done and pretty excellent overall. I don't really know what to think of all this noise about Gore running in 2008. The movie is definitely worth seeing... at the very least, it's gratifying to see Gore spin the climate crisis issue so convincingly (ie, positioning it as a moral issue), since that kind of strategy is so seriously lacking on the left. But it does a lot more than that, too. It's powerful and scary and fascinating, and also dorky in a way that I like. The fact that Gore keeps refering to his presentation as a "slide show" despite the fact that it's animated and on a computer (and the guy knows something about computers) is pretty cute.

Anya Kamenetz has been writing about "generation debt" for the Voice for over a year, and since I'm about to enter a life of debt myself (at least once I get around to applying for those student loans), I'm getting interested. Her book - Generation Debt: Why Now is a Terrible Time to Be Young - is just out, and I might need to read it. Except I'm sure it's horribly depressing, like most doses of reality. Also, she is also my age, and a columnist for the Voice, and has written a book, so it makes me feel a wee bit inadequate. But I was talking to someone a few weeks ago who said that the national debt has been shifted onto students in the form of interest on our loans... and shit, that is an important thing to think about. Anyway, in yet another accomplishment she has an editorial in today's Times about shitty internships. I'm glad to see it. I've never had an internship and don't really want to. You can do internships in my grad program ("my" grad program... weird), and are encouraged to, but um, I'd rather work. You know, for money? Kamenetz writes, "Instead of starting out in the mailroom for a pittance, this generation reports for business upstairs without pay." Nicely put, and what a crappy deal.

Hey, how'd you like to read a totally depressing feature about men dealing with life after coming back from Iraq? What if I told you it came with new photographs by Eugene Richards, my most favorite photo man?

Yesterday Audrey and I had a beautiful day hanging out in Central Park. Then we went to a random Irish pub, where we met 2 marines who were in town for Fleet Week, and proceeded to drink with them for about three hours. Aud managed the military small talk like a pro, but I had to have two drinks before I could figure out that particular kind of banter. The best moment was when Audrey said, completely straight-faced, "So, what's the most powerful weapon you've ever fired?" Now I know more than I ever wanted to about the symbolism of a marine dress uniform, along with a few other things. In case you were wondering, those shiny shoes hurt their feet a whole lot. I told them they should try stilettos (as if I ever do), and my North Carolina soldier looked down at my legs, which ended in $3 flip flops on my filthy feet and said, "Yeah, but stilettos make y'all look a lot better than we do in these." Touché.

the irony never ends...

Condaleeza Rice spoke at Boston College's graduation, where she was - surprise surprise - greeted by protest. But she didn't ignore them:

She acknowledged the protests, receiving applause after urging graduates to consider perspectives different from their own.

"There is nothing wrong with holding an opinion and holding it passionately," Ms. Rice said. "But at those times you're absolutely sure that you are right, go find somebody who disagrees. Don't allow yourself the easy course of the constant 'Amen' to everything you say."

...Because, ya know, the Bush administration is always happy to consider "perspectives different from their own." A similar thing happened when John McCain spoke at the New School graduation:

After yesterday's event, Mr. McCain told reporters he felt "fine" about his reception. "I feel sorry for people living in a dull world where they can't listen to the views of others," he said.

Yes, John, I feel real sorry for them too.

grrrrrrrr.

There's nothing like some good old fashioned rage at the literary establishment to get a girl's blood pumping on a gray Thursday morning:

Early this year, the Book Review's editor, Sam Tanenhaus, sent out a short letter to a couple of hundred prominent writers, critics, editors and other literary sages, asking them to please identify "the single best work of American fiction published in the last 25 years."

According to those surveyed, the winner is Toni Morrison's Beloved. Hooray, I guess. What a huge surprise. But that's pretty much the last time a woman writer appears on the extended list. Out of 4 runners up and 17 "Books That Also Received Multiple Votes," Philip Roth is cited 6 times, Don Delillo cited 3 times and Cormac McCarthy twice (for a total of 4 books - including a trilogy). There's also John Updike and Raymond Carver and Denis Johnson et al, but the only other woman is Marilynne Robinson for Housekeeping, a "book that also received multiple votes."

Aside from this tally being pretty disgusting (but - blah blah - not surprising), a good question is, why bother? WHAT IS THE POINT of choosing one book that is the very best out of the countless numbers published in the last 25 years?

A.O. Scott has some interesting things to say about that in the accompanying essay, but he also never stops to wonder about the lack of women on the list, though he does note the lack of young(er) writers. He's usually one of my favorite critics, partly because he is so damn smart and versatile - he's the film critic, and he writes for the Book Review all the time! He was on book leave, writing, it turns out, a book about the American novel! But come on. I don't understand why people do surveys about things with such obvious and terribly boring results.

For the record, the judges consisted of 38 women and 86 men. I don't necessarily think that more women judges would have meant more women as "winners," but I do want to point out that 38 to 86 is not any kind of balance, even if it looks a lot like it when compared to the results that group came up with. Not that anything as simplistic as "balance" is the goal here anyway.

If I could travel through time, I would go to the 50's and get people to make dresses that did not have teeny tiny waists, so that I could buy them on ebay right now.

Last Friday: Steve Almond and Julianna Baggott read from the new novel they co-wrote, Which Brings Me to You. I looooove Steve Almond, but had never heard him read before. He was just as hilarious and crass as I wanted him to be. His short stories (check out collections My Life in Heavy Metal and The Evil BB Chow) are observant, tender, funny and smutty. His nonfiction book Candyfreak is also pretty excellent. So, he and Julianna hardly knew each other but really liked each other's writing, and she had this idea for a book that consisted of two characters writing confessional letters back and forth to each other, so she asked him if he wanted to write the book with her. As he tells it, he was in a bad place with his own writing at the time, so he said no. She wrote the first chapter anyway and sent it to him, and then he said he'd do it because he loved what she'd written. In full self-deprecation mode, he writes about the process of collaborating on a book in the new issue of Poets & Writers.

Julianna read from that very first chapter, and she is tiny and manic and obnoxiously funny, and Steve, predictably, read 3 sex scenes from different parts of the book. He is so good at that shit. The reading was great, largely because they didn't treat their book like a sacred text. They interrupted themselves and made snide comments and talked to the audience, and it made hearing them read totally different than reading their work on the page, which is how I think readings should be. Afterward, a guy asked if they could record an audiobook that included all of their verbal footnotes.

Last night was T Cooper, Emily Barton and Paul LaFarge at Bluestockings. They made it "love to hate it/hate to love it" night, with each of them reading something from their own work (that they presumably loved) and then something else that they either loved to hate or hated to love. Emily read from Neuromancer by William Gibson, T read from Ethan Hawke's first novel, and Paul read some lines from an earl stage/experiment in writing what would ultimately be his seriously beautiful book The Facts of Winter. This was such a smart and entertaining way to organize a reading. It could even carry a whole reading series...

Speaking of books (um, when am I not?), here's the latest Bookslut column. It contains mention of poop. And here's my review of La Perdida. You really have to read this book. I'll even sell you a copy, when you come see Jessica Abel at the Grace Reading Series at Mo Pitkins next Tuesday, May 16th at 7pm. Deal?

the most smartest

I heart Kurt Andersen, always, but especially for his new New York magazine article:

The schadenfreude also has a righteous tint: Just as the Duke-lacrosse-team case confirms ugly stereotypes about privileged white jocks, Kaavya Viswanathan, the only child of a brain surgeon and gynecologist, confirms the invidious stereotype of privileged meritocrats gone wild. She is a flagrant example of the hard-charging freaks that our culture grooms and prods so many of its best and brightest children to become, a case study in one sociopathology of the adolescent overclass.

We are squinting at each other and I start to keep on walking, but then we both sort of stop.

"Hey," he says.

"Hey," I say, taking off my sunglasses. "How are you? Um.... when are you at the store these days?"

"Oh, I'm not today, I have the day off," he says.

"I mean, when are you there in general?"

"I don't work at the store, I hang art. So I'm mainly outside. It's good." Pause. He looks at me intently. "You look good."

"Thanks."

He laughs. "I'm hung over, going to get some coffee."

"Yeah, I wish I was, instead of going to work." I point up the street.

"So, maybe I'll see you over at Odessa Bar sometime."

"Yeah, maybe."

"Are you going there tonight?"

"Probably not."

"Okay. Well... it was good to see you."

"Yeah, I'll see you around."

How often is it that 2 people both think they know each other, but have in fact never met before? A few seconds into this conversation - which happened in the middle of 5th street on this insanely gorgeous and good mood-inducing Friday morning - I realized that this guy was not who I thought he was. And I have no idea who he thought I was, except to infer that he probably thinks we slept together. Pretty funny, since I am really never mistaken for anyone else (except occassionally Sarah Gilbert from Roseanne, which I still don't get). I let him keep talking because it was just easier than telling him that I never go to Odessa and have no idea what he's talking about. Also, I enjoy receiving compliments at 10am when i'm walking to work with wet hair (other than those shouted in passing by men licking their lips), and because he was pretty cute, if not the ambiguously gay boy of my casual acquaintance I originally thought he was. Oh well. Those skinny pale boys with black frame glasses really do all look the same.

friday dumping of the links.

-- What does it say about me that I get so much happiness from a critic absolutely slamming something that deserves to be slammed? The best example this week is Ben Brantley, who must have had a blast writing his review of the new musical Lestat:

Joining the ranks of Ambien, Lunesta, Sonata and other prescription lullaby drugs is "Lestat," the musical sleeping pill that opened last night at the Palace Theater....Hugh Panaro, in the title role, resembles a slimmed-down, foppish Fabio, the onetime top paperback cover model for such fare. And there is plenty of dialogue to match. "Whatever happened out there with the wolves has changed you, Lestat." Or: "I will never find solace! She was my solace! She stood between me and the abyss!"

-- This whole Kaavya Viswanathan plagiarism drama is ridiculous and entertaining. But once again, the dirty secrets of publishing kinda fascinate me.

The company that eventually became Alloy was founded in 1987. It had its first hit with the "Sweet Valley High" series. The company, then known as 17th Street Productions, was sold in 2000 to Alloy Inc., a large media company that owns the teenage-oriented retailer Delia's, and changed its name to Alloy Entertainment. Since then it has become a 'tween-lit hit factory.

-- Ginia Bellafante notices that books about Mommy-ing have gotten a little out of control.

Five hundred or so years from now, graduate students surveying our national library will wonder: So what was with all the mommies and babies? Had babies come before? Or was it simply that millennial Americans produced better babies, power babies (maybe)?

-- Then there's Janet Maslin's weird and not too convincing article about chick-lit:

Dizzy doesn't necessarily mean dopey. It means rejecting a caricatured version of feminism, studiousness or ambition in favor of even more caricatured womanly wiles. And it cuts a wide swath, from housewives to high school girls, from Bergdorf's all the way to Botswana.

-- Clare Zulkey interviews Michelle Tea. I knew Rent Girl was in development for TV, but did not know that Jill Soloway might be writing/directing.

-- Oh yeah, and on top of everything else, American Apparel is fat-phobic.

The New York Times Magazine this weekend featured a profile of Dov Charney, a couple years after the rest of the world had one (oh yeah, and after their own Style section wrote about him and American Apparel in November 2004, and Alex Kuczynski wrote about him in her "Critical Shopper" column last June). It presents him as a curiosity, when his weirdness has already been kind of beaten to death in the media. The difference is that this profile was largely flattering.

It's practically impossible to make the guy seem uncontroversial, but the writer of the article seemed more impressed than disturbed, interested in the ways Charney pushes boundaries and the positive implications of his obsession with style and youthfulness. I can see how Dov Charney can be seductive, both as a person and as a symbol, and how American Apparel is in many ways a great and innovative company. I want to believe that there can be socially responsible, "youth-driven" companies that treat their workers well and don't fuck up the environment and make stuff I want to buy. I even want to believe that someone like Dov Charney could be the one to do it. But I don't really think he is.

Charney's taste is fairly eclectic, but there are certain things at which he draws a hard line. Makeup is one. Plucked and trimmed eyebrows are another. To my surprise, short hair is a third. Looking over some fetching snapshots of a pixieish U.C. Santa Cruz student, "half-Japanese, half-white," showing herself off in a polka-dot bikini and biting into a strawberry, Charney nixed it on account of her Audrey Hepburn haircut. "You never see a girl we shot with short hair," he said. "That's unnatural."

Whereas your handlebar mustache, douche bag, just "naturally" grew on your stupid face like that?

Today I went out to get lunch (for a change), and stumbled on a brand new coffee shop on Mercer Street. It's called "think coffee," so it already gets points for a good name and a cute logo. It's also 100% Fair Trade (which, while it's not Rainforest Alliance Certified, is maybe the next best thing), and they're donating 25% of their profits to neighborhood charities. Which is A LOT. On top of that, the coffee is delicious and the place itself is huge - a serious plus since it's impossible to find a seat in a cafe around here. AND, it's open till midnight, unlike most of the places close to my office. So I think I have a new favorite place.

Shit. I just realized I missed Nan Goldin's latest show.

I saw Friends with Money this weekend (in an actual movie theater!), and thought it was brilliant. Lauren and I hated Nicole Holofcener's last movie, Lovely and Amazing (we now refer to as "Stupid and Insulting" or "Insipid and Annoying"), but it's bothering me that I can't remember why. Almost enough to see it again, except probably not. I also watched A History of Violence, which was good, but I'm not really sure why it's supposed to be this amazing commentary on violence and society and identity. In one of the special features they show the difference between the US and international release versions of 2 very violent shots: basically, the MPAA thinks American audiences can handle oozing blood, but not spurting blood. So the international audience got to see a little bit of spurting, while in the US version we were only allowed to see blood slowly oozing from the face of a guy who had his nose bone or whatever slammed into his brain. I'm so glad they're looking out for me.

I got home from Bluestockings yesterday before 5pm, for maybe the first time ever, and was amazed that there was such a long night ahead to get all sorts of things done. So I did the huge pile of dishes. I put away the mountains of clothes that were all over the place, and sorted through a ton of mail and pieces of paper. I went through stacks of magazines and organized them, kind of, or at least put them in new piles. I'm waaaaaay too attached to all this stuff. But I don't know what to do about it. And then, last night Emily asked me if I had a particular issue of the Review that she needed something from, and I got excited thinking that some of this obsessively archived crap might actually be useful, and then it turned out that the issue she wanted was the only one I didn't have.

New York magazine has a short thing about This American Life's upcoming Showtime show. Says Ira,

It’s like two worlds colliding, right? Pay cable and public broadcasting. But it’s been a really happy thing for us. We kept waiting for the meeting where they say, ‘Okay, when do the girls take off their tops?’ But that meeting never came.

I had no idea they were moving to NYC to do this! It actually makes me a little sad. Kind of a serious loss for Chicago.